Debt: The First 5000 Years - autonomous learning

HONOR AND DEGRADATION 18 3
to which displaced, indebted farmers fled. Resistance, in the ancient
Middle East, was always less a politics of rebellion than a politics of
exodus, of melting away with one's flocks and families-often before
both were taken away.49 There were always tribal peoples living on the
fringes. During good times, they began to take to the cities; in hard
times, their numbers swelled with refugees-farmers who effectively
became Enkidu once again. Then, periodically, they would create their
own alliances and sweep back into the cities once again as conquerors.
It's difficult to say precisely how they imagined their situation, because
it's only in the Old Testament, written on the other side of the Fertile
Crescent, that one has any record of the pastoral rebels' points of view.
But nothing there mitigates against the suggestion that the extraordinary
emphasis we find there on the absolute authority of fathers, and
the jealous protection of their fickle womenfolk, were made possible
by, but at the same time a protest against, this very commoditization
of people in the cities that they fled.
The world's Holy Books-the Old and New Testaments, the Koran,
religious literature from the Middle Ages to this day-echo this
voice of rebellion, combining contempt for the corrupt urban life, suspicion
of the merchant, and often, intense misogyny. One need only
think of the image of Babylon itself, which has become permanently
lodged in the collective imagination as not only the cradle of civilization,
but also the Place of Whores. Herodotus echoed popular Greek
fantasies when he claimed that every Babylonian maiden was obliged
to prostitute herself at the temple, so as to raise the money for her
dowry.50 In the New Testament, Saint Peter often referred to Rome
as "Babylon," and the Book of Revelation provides perhaps the most
vivid image of what he meant by this when it speaks of Babylon, "the
great whore," sitting "upon a scarlet colored beast, full of names of
blasphemy":
17=4 And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color,
and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a
golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of
her fornication:
ITS And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY,
BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOM­
INATIONS OF THE EARTH. 51
Such is the voice of patriarchal hatred of the city, and of the angry
millennia] voices of the fathers of the ancient poor.